John Gray on 'Seven Types of Atheism'

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I was listening to this last night. He's an interesting thinker and seems to have a lot of interest in Spinoza, Russell, etc.. A lot of this lecture includes critiques of 'new atheism' which he finds parochial and somewhat uniquely 20th century American-locked in it's perspective and aims.

One of many really interesting < 10 min shorts on Youtube with him analyzing sociology and politics:

15 min of an interview on The Silence of Animals:

Wonderful stuff!
Fits perfectly into what I've been pondering for the past month or so.

Another long-player interview from 2014 (50 minutes). What he's saying early on, he never bought the 'end of history' narrative but rather considered the end of the cold war the resumption or return to traditional historic cycles.

This is assuming, in my opinion quite inaccurately, that Atheism is an active movement. Some may consider themselves dormant, others entirely detached from the strain of social evolution, then there's militant atheists and the like, the kind that kill for their cause. I personally agree, unlike how I used to vehemently disagree several years ago, that atheism can be a damning ideology used as a tool to justify killings.

However, I think to see atheism as an idea that all people use as an active component to propagate political beliefs and principles is far fetched, and whilst I haven't yet watched the video I believe that it's far larger than any one person can accurately explain, organise, dissect and analyse in what I'm just going to assume is what happens in this video.

In other words, it's a complicated concept that sort of assimilates itself with all kinds of other ideas but doesn't in itself exist as a self containing idea. For example, secularism is not necessarily swayed by being atheist or theist, it relies on your political views. However, one overly pious or antitheist may also have their mind changed by these beliefs.

I think a lot of Non-Theist or Non-Religious people or Secularists accept the term rather than waste time arguing over minor points, especially if they have a lot of common ground with others who happen to be Anti-Theist such as the late Christopher Hitchens.

TBH the thread title might be misleading by this point (ie. just the name of the first video). I'm really posting a lot of these videos because I like his quality of thought across a broad spectrum of concepts. I can see where if one were to jump in on the titles and not watch the video it would be pretty confusing.